Stream Of Consciousness Example Quotes

There are two ways of looking at karma, the subjective and the objective. The subjective approach is when you do something bad, for example killing something for no good reason, fun, sport, power, not for food, then your brain, or stream of consciousness, tells you what you are doing is wrong, bad, and so your power is reduced. The objective approach is when you do something bad, the collective energy of the universe suffers, and then the collective energy of the universe blames you. One could also argue that the collective energy of the universe suffers, because your brain told you what you were doing was wrong. Interestingly, eastern religions and philosophies suggest that karma can be overcome by the individual. Hence the brain of a psychopath may not indicate to them, what they are doing is wrong. But history has proven over time, that this individual will eventually succumb to karma, and lose power, perhaps suggesting that the objective approach is the ultimate decider.

His tongue slid down the inner length of her finger, then traced the lines on her palm. “Such lovely hands,” he murmured, nibbling on the fleshy part of her thumb as his fingers entwined with hers. “Strong, and yet so graceful and delicate.” “You’re talking nonsense,” Kate said self-consciously. “My hands—” But he silenced her with a finger to her lips. “Shhh,” he admonished. “Haven’t you learned that you should never ever contradict your husband when he is admiring your form?” Kate shivered with delight. “For example,” he continued, the very devil in his voice, “if I want to spend an hour examining the inside of your wrist”— with lightning-quick movements, his teeth grazed the delicate thin skin on the inside of her wrist—“ it is certainly my prerogative, don’t you think?” Kate had no response, and he chuckled, the sound low and warm in her ears. “And don’t think I won’t,” he warned, using the pad of his finger to trace the blue veins that pulsed under her skin. “I may decide to spend two hours examining your wrist.” Kate watched with fascination as his fingers, touching her so softly that she tingled from the contact, made their way to the inside of her elbow, then stopped to twirl circles on her skin. “I can’t imagine,” he said softly, “that I could spend two hours examining your wrist and not find it lovely.” His hand made the jump to her torso, and he used his palm to lightly graze the tip of her puckered breast. “I should be most aggrieved were you to disagree.” He leaned down and captured her lips in a brief, yet searing kiss. Lifting his head just an inch, he murmured, “It is a wife’s place to agree with her husband in all things, hmmm?” His words were so absurd that Kate finally managed to find her voice. “If,” she said with an amused smile, “his opinions are agreeable, my lord.” One of his brows arched imperiously. “Are you arguing with me, my lady? And on my wedding night, no less.” “It’s my wedding night, too,” she pointed out. He made a clucking noise and shook his head. “I may have to punish you,” he said. “But how? By touching?” His hand skimmed over one breast, then the next. “Or not touching?” He lifted his hands from her skin, but he leaned down, and through pursed lips, blew a soft stream of air over her nipple. “Touching,” Kate gasped, arching off the bed. “Definitely touching.” “You think?” He smiled, slowly like a cat. “I never thought I’d say this, but not touching has its appeal.

The auditory cortex, as an example, processes the sound inputs that have not already been gated earlier in the stream. It specifically works with tone, pitch, harmony, loudness, and beat patterning or timing. In people that use auditory inputs as a primary or major area of sensory processing musicians for instance there is much less gating of sound in the deeper levels of the brain than in nonmusicians. In consequence, much more sound input reaches the auditory cortex. Because the auditory cortex is continually used to work with larger amounts of sound inflows (with more subtlety), it becomes highly developed and shows tremendous plasticity, that is, continuous new neuronal development. Frances Densmore, for example, the ethnomusicologist who recorded thousands of Native plant songs in the early twentieth century, could perceive pitch differentiations as tiny as 1/32 in deviation. (She had as well total recall and prefect pitch.) The more a sensory modality is consciously used to analyze incoming sensory inflows, the more sensitive it becomes, and the larger the neural network within it becomes.

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations . . . . Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing . . . . It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.

Instead of “watching the thinker,” you can also create a gap in the mind stream simply by directing the focus of your attention into the Now. Just become intensely conscious of the present moment. This is a deeply satisfying thing to do. In this way, you draw consciousness away from mind activity and create a gap of no-mind in which you are highly alert and aware but not thinking. This is the essence of meditation. In your everyday life, you can practice this by taking any routine activity that normally is only a means to an end and giving it your fullest attention, so that it becomes an end in itself. For example, every time you walk up and down the stairs in your house or place of work, pay close attention to every step, every movement, even your breathing. Be totally present. Or when you wash your hands,

Ultimately, attachment theory helps one understand the ways in which people function on an individual level and while interacting with one another. Although attachment theory has a variety of applications, it tends to be especially useful in couples’ therapy. Since each attachment style has generalized trends, understanding your or your partner’s coping mechanisms, subconscious beliefs, and perceptions can relieve substantial communication issues. For example, in a relationship, the Dismissive-Avoidant may be withdrawn, autonomous, and seemingly independent. To the Dismissive-Avoidant, they are functioning as they always have—on their own. To an Anxious Attachment, however, it may feel as though their partner is on the verge of abandoning them and may cause serious emotional distress. However, the Dismissive-Avoidant’s coping mechanisms don’t necessarily mean they are detaching from the relationship—they are actually just detaching from their own emotions. Now, although none of these behaviors are necessarily healthy in a relationship, understanding why they occur is the first step. Once partners understand each other’s coping mechanisms and vulnerabilities, they can begin to supply their partner with the things that they do need. For example, the Dismissive-Avoidant needs continuous and unwavering emotional support and validation. Since they were emotionally neglected as a child, they need to slowly learn that they can consistently and predictably rely on others. The Anxious Attachment individual needs reassurance and affection to understand that they are good enough and that they won’t be rejected. The simple knowledge of the pain points of your partner and the pain points that lie within yourself opens up a whole stream of communication that you previously were unable to tap into—because your conscious mind didn’t even know it was there. Moreover, your attachment style also interacts with what Dr. Gary Chapman describes as your “Love Language.” Just as there are different spoken languages, and different dialects present within the spoken languages, Love Languages are different ways that people express and receive love or gratitude when they interact with others, whether with a romantic partner or with friends and family. According to Dr. Chapman’s book, they consist of five different kinds of expressions: 1. Words of affirmation 2. Acts of service 3. Giving and receiving gifts 4. Quality time 5. Physical touch Given the attachment style of each partner in a relationship, certain expressions may be better received. Attachment theory applies to a variety of circumstances and works well paired with other theories to make couples therapy a more holistic experience. The following chapters will dive into what your attachment style is, what it means, and how it functions in all aspects of your life—from your romantic relationships to your friendships with coworkers.

The relation between binding and consciousness is less clear. Neurocognitive binding surely affects the character of Umweltian consciousness and may be a necessary condition for it. Whether binding provides sufficient conditions for subjectivity in Umweltian or even more basic forms is not evident. In theory, neurocognitive binding and phenomenological binding could come apart - this would be implied, for example, by evidence that bound representations are sometimes formed outside of subjective experience. One possibility is that binding may not be sufficient for phenomenal consciousness unless it also includes affective content that projects meaning onto objects and events, then bound representations that lack affective content would fail to generate conscious experience. It could be, for instance, that bound representations are formed by the synchronous firing of distributed neural systems that specialize in different features of the scene, but that this bound representation must then be made accessible to the wider system for memory, categorization, and affective response if it is to become part of the stream of consciousness. And if this is so, then information integration would not be sufficient to generate subjectivity. Although much of this picture remains opaque, work on binding is providing the first glimpse of how the Umwelt was made.

Somebody is in a queer state of mind, perhaps behaves oddly, and no reason for this can be discovered at the time. Later—a month, a year, 10 years—the cause of this effect reveals itself. Because of where or what or how I am now, I behaved in such a fashion then.”54 Priestley called this the “future-influencing-present effect”—not unlike what later researchers would call presentiment but unfolding in many cases across a much longer timeframe of an individual’s life. In his 1964 book Man & Time, Priestley described several examples. One letter-writer was a WWII veteran with what we would now call PTSD, who experienced a “breakdown” during the war and relapses of his condition thereafter. He credited his recovery to a somewhat older woman with children whom he met and married after the war and, by the time of his writing, had a teenage daughter with. But “for a year before he met his wife or knew anything about her, he used to pass the gate of her country cottage on the local bus. And he never did this without feeling that he and that cottage were somehow related.”55 Another, older letter writer recalled being a girl during the First World War and when out walking one night in London, “found herself looking up at a hospital, quite strange to her, with tears streaming down her cheeks.” Years later, she moved in with a woman friend, and they remained partners for 25 years. “This friend was then taken ill and she died in that same hospital at which the girl so many years before had stared through her inexplicable tears.”56 Priestley also gives an example from two acquaintances of his own: Dr A began to receive official reports from Mrs B, who was in charge of one branch of a large department. These were not personal letters signed by Mrs B, but the usual duplicated official documents. Dr A did not know Mrs B, had never seen her, knew nothing about her except that she had this particular job. Nevertheless, he felt a growing excitement as he received more and more of these communications from Mrs B. This was so obvious that his secretary made some comment on it. A year later he had met Mrs B and fallen in love with her. They are now most happily married. He believes … that he felt this strange excitement because the future relationship communicated it to him; we might say that one part of his mind, not accessible to consciousness except as a queer feeling, already knew that Mrs B was to be tremendously important to him.57

Another example of how quantum physics brings the subject back into science is Henry Stapp’s interpretation of the quantum Zeno effect, a phenomenon in physics where repeated observations of a radioactive particle can prevent it from decaying in the usual, predicted manner. Stapp extends this to argue that the deliberate application of mental effort or intention holds in place our brain’s “template for action,” which then produces the brain states that subsequently generate experiential feedback.20 As a result, Stapp contends that we live in “a universe in which we human beings, by means of our value-based intentional efforts, can make a difference first in our own behaviors, then in the social matrix in which we are imbedded, and eventually in the entire physical reality that sustains our streams of conscious experiences.”21 This theory presents a new understanding of ourselves and our place in nature, and raises important sociological and philosophical issues that, according to Stapp, “extend far beyond the narrowly construed boundaries of science.”22

Personal Thinking Blockchains More speculatively for the farther future, the notion of blockchain technology as the automated accounting ledger, the quantized-level tracking device, could be extensible to yet another category of record keeping and administration. There could be “personal thinking chains” as a life-logging storage and backup mechanism. The concept is “blockchain technology + in vivo personal connectome” to encode and make useful in a standardized compressed data format all of a person’s thinking. The data could be captured via intracortical recordings, consumer EEGs, brain/computer interfaces, cognitive nanorobots, and other methodologies. Thus, thinking could be instantiated in a blockchain — and really all of an individual’s subjective experience, possibly eventually consciousness, especially if it’s more precisely defined. After they’re on the blockchain, the various components could be administered and transacted — for example, in the case of a post-stroke memory restoration. Just as there has not been a good model with the appropriate privacy and reward systems that the blockchain offers for the public sharing of health data and quantified-self-tracking data, likewise there has not been a model or means of sharing mental performance data. In the case of mental performance data, there is even more stigma attached to sharing personal data, but these kinds of “life-streaming + blockchain technology” models could facilitate a number of ways to share data privately, safely, and remuneratively. As mentioned, in the vein of life logging, there could be personal thinking blockchains to capture and safely encode all of an individual’s mental performance, emotions, and subjective experiences onto the blockchain, at minimum for backup and to pass on to one’s heirs as a historical record. Personal mindfile blockchains could be like a next generation of Fitbit or Apple’s iHealth on the iPhone 6, which now automatically captures 200+ health metrics and sends them to the cloud for data aggregation and imputation into actionable recommendations. Similarly, personal thinking blockchains could be easily and securely recorded (assuming all of the usual privacy concerns with blockchain technology are addressed) and mental performance recommendations made to individuals through services such as Siri or Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, perhaps piped seamlessly through personal brain/computer interfaces and delivered as both conscious and unconscious suggestions. Again perhaps speculatively verging on science fiction, ultimately the whole of a society’s history might include not just a public records and document repository, and an Internet archive of all digital activity, but also the mindfiles of individuals. Mindfiles could include the recording of every “transaction” in the sense of capturing every thought and emotion of every entity, human and machine, encoding and archiving this activity into life-logging blockchains.

These descending sensory pathways originate in the cortex, and their influence can either inhibit or facilitate the sensory input from any area of the body, greatly amplify or suppress altogether any given sensation. Sensory activity within the central nervous system is a Janus head, a two-way stream; signals originating in the brain have just as much to do with conscious sensation as do actual stimulations of the peripheral nerve endings. In fact, it is the descending paths which determine the sensitivity of any particular ascending pathway. The wide varieties of sexual response—among different individuals and within the same individual at different times—provide us with a clear example of this centrifugal influence upon incoming sensations: Depending upon past experiences and the present situation, the same stimulation of the genitals can produce intense ecstasy, bland and neutral sensations, or extreme discomfort. Orgasm can be immediate, or deferred indefinitely. And the imagination alone can produce constant engorgement, utter impotence, and all the degrees of arousal in between. The descending paths can color all kinds of sensory input to this degree. These pathways allow the mind to determine the active threshold for different sensory signals, and make it possible to focus attention upon a single source of input in the midst of many. It is difficult to imagine what practical use our sensory apparatus would be to us without such a mechanism. We would have no way of selecting a voice from all the other sounds around us, of locating specific objects within the swirl of visual impressions, or of retiring from our senses for contemplation and sleep. This centrifugal principle of selectivity is as vital to our appropriate responses to the world as is stimulation itself.

There have also been novels about the deaf by the deaf, for example, Islay by Douglas Bullard, which attempt to catch the distinctive perceptions, the stream of consciousness, the inner speech of those who sign.

3. GET RID OF YOUR STORIES Once you know what the beast looks like, you can slay it. Take your list of “can’ts” and “shoulds” and “I nevers,” etc., and write stream of consciousness in a journal (see example below), and really feel in your body what you’re getting from these old limiting beliefs such as: “I feel special, I feel safe, I get to live with my parents and never get a job,” etc. Make a list of these false rewards. Really push yourself to get them all on to the page. Then feel the attention the specialness or the comfort or the safety or whatever your trip is and really become clear on it. Catch yourself fully in the act and feel it all the way through. Now look at your list of false rewards for what they really are: scared little parts of yourself acting out. Thank them for trying to protect you and for keeping you company, but tell them it’s time to run along now.